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Comment
. 2015 Apr 27:4:e07552.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.07552.

How do babies feel pain?

Manon Ranger  1 , Ruth E Grunau  2
Affiliations
Comment

How do babies feel pain?

Manon Ranger et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Functional MRI studies suggest that healthy full-term newborn babies experience some aspects of pain in a similar way to adults.

Keywords: development; fMRI; human; infant; neuroscience; pain.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests:The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Pain is associated with similar patterns of brain activity in adults and newborn babies.
This figure–taken from Goksan et al. (2015)–shows brain activity in selected brain regions in adults (top) and infants (bottom) in response to a prick in the foot that did not break the skin. Each colour represents activity in a different region of the brain; the activity is overlaid onto cross sections of a standard brain template for an adult or newborn baby, with the top-most cross section being on the right. ACC: anterior cingulate cortex, S1: primary somatosensory cortex, PMC: primary motor cortex, SMA: supplementary motor area.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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